Journal poll suggests people are relaxed about Scottish Independence...but want more power for the regions

19:48, 3 Sep 2014

Updated 19:52, 3 Sep 2014

ByThe Journal

Younger people especially want to see transfer of powers from Whitehall, according to a poll by the Journal

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Danny Lawson/PA Wire

Campaign material ahead of the Scottish independence referendum

A vote will take place later this month that will affect everyone in the UK - but only a tenth of us will actually get the chance to go to the polls.

Whether the Scottish Independence referendum results in a yes or a no vote - and the latest reports are that the vote could still go either way - the decision taken by 5.2m Scots will have implications for the other 58m people who live in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

After trailing for most of the concern, the SNP appears to be gaining momentum ahead of the vote on September 18. A yes vote would make the North East a border region for the first time in hundreds of years, and even a vote to retain the union is likely to be so close that it will be followed by calls for greater devolution to the nations of the UK.

Any move in that direction would inevitably result in new calls to consider the essential contradiction of the devolution agenda followed by the Labour Government of the late 1990s: giving the Scottish and Welsh, and later the Northern Irish, the power to run their own affairs, but still having English matters decided by MPs from the UK as a whole.

The Scottish independence debate has also revived calls for greater power to be devolved from Whitehall to the regions. The North East decisively voted against a regional assembly in a referendum held in 2004 but all the main political parties will go into the next election promising to give more powers to the different corners of England.

In our latest poll run by Other Lines of Enquiry North, using their in-house Panelbase service, we asked people both in the North East and nationally for their thoughts on Scottish independence, whether England needs the same devolved powers as the other home nations and whether the regions should have more say over their affairs.

When asked whether people were worried about the impact of a yes vote in the Scottish Independence referendum, our respondents seem fairly relaxed: 57% of people nationally and 54% in the North East were not worried and only 33% both nationally and locally were concerned. (Interestingly, the 18-24 age group - those thought to be most in favour of independence in Scotland - were the most concerned, while the next age group up (25-34) were the most relaxed.)

The strongest vote of the three questions in our poll came when people were asked: “Do you think England should be given the same devolved powers as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?”

Here 60% of people nationally and 58% of people in the North East voted yes, compared to only 14% nationally and 13% locally voting no.

Such strength of feeling suggests a problem for the Government after the Scottish referendum. Even a no vote is likely to result in more devolved powers going to Edinburgh, but that would increase the calls from English activists for Scottish MPs to lose the power they currently have to pass legislation affecting England.

Finally, we asked people whether the regions of Britain should be given more devolved powers from Whitehall. Both Labour and the Conservatives have made great play in recent months of boosting the North, though cynics have suggested that all political parties are good at promising more to the regions when elections approach and less keen when the people in Whitehall is them.

Nationally 46% of people want more devolution to the regions, beating the 26% who don’t.

But this final question is the one where a significant gap emerges between our national and local respondents: in the North East the call for more local powers was much stronger, with 55% in favour of greater local accountability and only 17% against.

Our poll also showed a big divergence in different age groups, with younger people in the North East almost exclusively in favour of the region getting more power from Whitehall while opposition grew among older people from the North East who responded to our poll.